Experience Sharing from the Sohag Rural Development Project in Egypt: Confidence Building to Mobilize Participation

1. The Sohag Rural Development Project in Egypt is promoting the sustainable development of Sohag’s rural villages through a participatory approach initiated by the Shorouk programme, a rural development programme managed by the Government of Egypt. Its specific objectives are to improve incomes and the quality of life in rural communities; and to promote equitable access to credit for the rural poor, unemployed youth and women. In addition, the project is expected to enhance the capacity of local communities and the local government to plan, appraise, cofinance, implement and manage rural infrastructure subprojects.

2. Project components are:

• institutional support and training of staff and rural communities;
• rural infrastructure, including projects for drinking water, road paving, environmental and sanitation rehabilitation, social centres, one-class schools for women’s literacy, post offices and health units; and
• modernization of agriculture and rural financing.

Economic and Social Characteristics of the Rural Areas in Sohag

3. Sohag has a population of 3 569 107 inhabitants, 77% of whom (or 2 754 847 inhabitants) are rural. The main agricultural activity in the governorate is farming, and the agricultural land area covers about 295 600 acres. Some 80% of the total rural population have access to drinking water, but the water contains illegal levels of iron and manganese salts (40%); about 60% have access to paved roads and 3% to sanitation services. Health services cover 55% of the rural areas. Women represent 77% of the illiterate population.

4. The rural society in Sohag is highly traditional. Women have very low status in the community and are not allowed to take part in public affairs or carry out community work. These attitudes are prevalent despite the important contribution women make to the household in terms of childcare, and domestic and farm work.

Participation in the Rural Infrastructure Component

5. The infrastructure component supports needs identified and prioritized by the villagers such as drinking water networks, road paving, environmental infrastructure, social centres, single-class schools, post offices, health units and rural hospitals.

6. At the start of the project, seven meetings took place in different villages to present the project’s rationale and approach, and to discuss local communities’ infrastructure needs and priorities. Meetings were open to local council representatives and other government agents, ‘eminent personalities’ from among the leading village families, members of community development associations, representatives of the smaller hamlets, women and whomever else wished to attend.

7. Initially not all social categories attended the meetings. Women, in particular, did not attend for a variety of reasons, the most important being:

• lack of confidence that the project would be implemented, particularly as other projects had organized similar meetings in the past, but the proposals made were not executed due to lack of financing;
• the long time lapse between project preparation and implementation. Local people had known about the project since 1996. Their hopes had been raised at previous meetings, where villagers had already put forward proposals, as yet unrealized. They therefore questioned the utility of further meetings; and
• villagers’ adherence to customs and traditions limiting women’s mobility and roles, and hence their participation in community meetings.

8. To overcome scepticism and ensure future success, the project first had to gain the local people’s confidence, especially men’s. It therefore took steps to achieve immediate tangible results, building a water network, digging a number of water wells in one village, and paving roads in two other villages. These measures did, indeed, have a positive impact: villagers realized that the project could deliver on its commitments.

9. The project then again organized meetings in each village, during which local community representatives, assisted by project staff, ranked priorities and prepared plans for the implementation of village infrastructure projects. Eventually 51 meetings were held, covering all rural villages in the Sohag governorate. The total number of participants reached 8 118 persons, representing almost all village groups. Attendance by women ranged from none in seven villages and only two in another village, to as many as 24. In total, some 1 230 women attended (about 15% of all participants).

10. After about a year of discussions and work with beneficiaries, the project had achieved the following results:

• The meetings had led to villagers’ contributing their ideas, committing themselves to support the project’s work, and making material contributions such as cash and in-kind donations (land).
• In one of the last meetings, attended by 17 women, some of the women requested that projects be designed to respond to their specific needs (e.g. kindergartens).
• Villagers had agreed to organize meetings periodically to ensure coordination between the project and the other cofinanciers assisting them in establishing new schemes.

Main Lessons Learned

11. Problems and constraints faced by the project, especially initially, have included:

• communities’ lack of confidence in implementation agencies as a result of their previous experiences of delays in implementation; and
• customs and traditions hindering women’s participation in some rural areas.

12. As previously mentioned, the project was able to overcome these problems and constraints by delivering on its commitments. As a result, attitudes towards women’s participation started changing. From the start, the project emphasized that there were schemes that local communities could implement specifically in the interests of village women and young girls, and that the request for such schemes should come from the women themselves. Indeed, in one of the targeted villages, based on women’s voiced assessments of their needs, the men donated a piece of land and contributed half of the costs needed to build a social centre. The centre will provide local women with, among other things, vocational training, literacy classes, a kindergarten and an office for a community development association.

13. The project’s success in mobilizing villagers’ participation was facilitated by the positive results achieved by programmes and projects implemented by other donors jointly with government authorities. Special recognition goes to the work of the United Nations Children’s Fund and, during the past 15 years, that of the Shorouk programme.

14. Reaching out to women in ‘conservative’ communities hinges on:

• gaining the confidence of men that the project is trustworthy and delivers on its promises;
• benefiting from and building on other organizations’ experiences in working with women;
• being clear about the tangible benefits that the project may bring to women (new skills, new knowledge, etc.) and to their families; and
• being committed to giving women the possibility of voicing and discussing their own needs, and to listening and responding accordingly.

Date: April 2002

Contact Information:

Mr Ayman Al Guindy,
Deputy Project Director,
Sohag Rural Development Project
Tel: 002093 605050 Fax: 002093 605222
E-mail:ruralsohag@hotmail.com